1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a binding device or binder for use in binding a long or endless material with a lace having suitable rigidity and flexibility, and more particularly to a binder for binding a bundle of electric wires, steel wires or fibers with laces.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Cable harnesses are used for electric connection in electric equipments in automatic telephone switchboards, air planes, or automobiles. At the present time, these cable harnesses are manually prepared by using nyron laces or braids, or knite strings. In other words, a lace is wound around a long material at least two turns, and then tightened fast at to form a knot by pulling the opposite free ends of the lace. In this respect, each binding or tightening operation requires a force of over 5 to 10 kg, so that hands of an operator is sometimes injured and in addition there results a large range of vibrations in the conditions of the lace thus bound, with the accompanying shortcoming of poor operational efficiency. For avoiding these shortcomings, there has been proposed a binding or tightening tool which tightens around a long material a plastic tape having tightening portions at its opposite ends. More particularly, the plastic tape is wound around a long material one turn, and then, tightening ring portions, through which the ends of the tape are pierced, are tightened together by means of a tightening force. This tyoe tool could meet a partial sucess in improvements on operational efficiency and consistent quality of bound portions or knots, but the plastic tapes are costly, so so that in case binding portions are tremendously large in number, an increase in expense is no longer negligible an presents a critical economical problem, unlike the less expensive use of the prior art kite string, nyron lace and the like.
There is known an electric wire binder which has been disclosed by the U.S. Pat. No. 3,670,783 patented on June 20, 1972 for John T. Goodwill. According to the John's patent, a cable is gripped by a jaw in the position which is to provide a knot, while a bobbin having a lace wound thereon rotates around a cable. As a result, a lace is paid out from the bobbin and passes around the cable, whereupon the lace is placed on a loop forming mechanism positioned adjacent to the cable on a path of the lace. As the bobbin rotates around the cable, the loop forming machine is lifted and rotated through an angle of 270.degree., whereby the lace is formed into a loop, and the lace itself is twisted at the bottom of the loop. Upon the completion of rotation of the loop forming machine an open portion of this loop is positioned at a point on a path of a rotating bobbin so as to allow the bobbin to pass through the open portion of the loop, so that there is formed a loose knot of a lace.
After passing through this loop, the bobbin is displaced a small distance further, and then stopped. At this point, the bobbin is cut off from the rotating mechanism and coupled to other mechanism which rotates the bobbin positively, whereby an excessive portion of the lace is re-wound, and the knot is tightened around the cable, after which the lace is released from the loop forming machine. After the knot is tightened, the cable is advanced to a subsequent knot-forming position, of the cable remains still, and a binding tool is displaced relative thereto. However, the John's patent only relates to a technique, by which a single lace is continuously wound around a cable in several positions, rather than to a technique, by which a lace is bound in an individual knot-forming position and tightened fast thereat. Accordingly, the John's patent cannot be applied to a single knot forming portion, and in addition, the starting and terminating ends of a lace should be bound manually.